Ordinary

If you look in the dictionary you’ll find Ordinary is something considered to be normal, routine, regular, the customary course.  In my opinion Ordinary doesn’t get the respect it deserves.   We live in a culture that values the above-average, over the top, best it can be kind of experience.  An unrealistic way of living and birthing.  Now don’t get all worked up that I’m not gushing about the beauty and mountain top moment that birth can be, hear me out.  I observe plenty of beauty, holiness and all together awesomeness at births.  I love those moments.  But I value ordinariness just as much as the once-in-a-life-time-ness of a child being born. 

It’s possibly a loaded word, this ordinary, when it comes to describing a woman’s labor and a child’s birth. Depending on where you are and who is providing care- the regular routine may not be desirable.  I’ve been in those places, seen those births.  Heck, I’ve had one of those births.  And that isn’t quite what I’m getting at.  It’s not the “normal” defined by the hospital or provider you choose.  Its “normal” as defined by nature, the regular old ordinary natural process.  Muscles contracting, hormones surging, baby descending through bone-this is the Ordinary that I watch for.

Over the course of my birth work I am convinced that there is a piece of this ordinary in every birth.  Yes every birth.  I can go back through each birth I have attended and find the Ordinary.  Sometimes it is a glimpse- one naturally occurring contraction, an uncoached urge to push, a baby that cries and pinks despite an operative birth, a mother’s swelling oxytocin as her babe suckles for the first time.  The moments are there, and I’ve started looking for them, counting them almost.  Because ordinary is the goal, ordinary means it is working. Despite our efforts to control it, to manage it, even if it has to go undercover, Ordinary happens.  

It is easy now for me to break down those moments in a birth.  Like my son taking apart his Lego creation, each moment a brick. Each brick a part of the whole no matter the size. As a childbirth teacher I explain the workings of the female human body during pregnancy and childbirth on a monthly basis.  Perhaps that repetition in presenting the birthing process has made it seem so obvious and normal to me that it IS simply ordinary.  So entrenched in my mind are the sequence of events, so many times I have seen it, that is Ordinary.

Let me give you an example:

The first birth that comes to mind is Sarah.  Sarah labored for 3 days, the first day a slow starter after her water broke.  It wasn’t painful so much at first but she was restless and anxious.  And those early contractions were close enough to keep her from sleep.  By the second day her contractions had picked up- they were closer together and stronger. She made the 1 hour drive from her home to the birth center where she hoped to give birth.  Sarah missed another night’s sleep in the course of labor unfolding.  She was getting tired and so was her uterus.  

Along with her midwife’s counsel Sarah and her husband decided to transfer to a local hospital for services the birth center couldn’t offer.  Leaving her birth plan behind was hard.  But she needed some sleep.  At the hospital she transferred care to a different midwife who ordered an epidural and some medicine to keep Sarah’s contractions coming. 

This is where I met them in the process.  Sarah hosted a childbirth class at her house two months prior and I was the teacher.  Her original midwife called me and asked me to doula them as she was not able to care for them at the hospital.  I was glad to go, it was my own son’s birthday and I felt a special connection to Sarah from our first meeting.

When I arrived Sarah was just waking from a few hours of sleep.  She was smiling and chatty.  The epidural had given her just want she needed.  Sleep.  While sleeping her body continued to work and she was ready to push.  Her anxiety resurfaced and insecurity, “Is this going to work?  Can I push out my baby?”.  The fresh midwife cheered and encouraged Sarah through the first pushes.  And she did do it, Sarah pushed.  Uterus contracting, baby descending, mother opening.  She pushed, the baby moved, one bit closer to birth.  Sarah didn’t believe it would happen, she couldn’t even feel it happening because of her epidural.  Her plans for this birth had already changed so much, she doubted she could do it.  And then she did it.  A squawking pink baby girl in her arms she washed over with relief less than an hour after her first push.  

Betsy, get to the point here.  You are waiting for the Ordinary part right?  So Sarah’s hoped for natural birth center water birth did not happen. Regardless, her body started labor on its own water breaking then gradual contractions.  Pretty ordinary stuff.  I observed Sarah work hard; muscles straining, sweat rolling, gazing into her husband’s eyes for support. Plain hard work. And then the emergence of her daughter. It happened, it worked.  And it was very Ordinary.  Remember that definition I mentioned earlier? Something considered to be normal, routine, regular, the customary course.  

And Ordinary really is quite nice.